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Dharmette: Mind's Body (5/5) Five Types of Rapture / Energies Moving

Introduction

Greetings, dharma friends. Greetings from Mountain View, California, and seated on Ohlone land. It's lovely to sit with you this Friday morning—morning my time, different times for many of you.

This week, I've had the delight and pleasure to support you as Gil has been traveling, and for us to explore the energy body or the mind's body. We've explored the different ways that paying attention to the body can manifest in different experiences, open up insights, and support practicing.

Today we'll conclude. We'll bring it all together. Without further ado, let's start practicing together. Let's start sitting. Let's give our hearts, our bodies, and our minds to this practice.

Guided Meditation

Let us arrive. Let us arrive again and again and again. Every moment is a new arrival in this body, in this heart, in this moment in time.

Releasing the body, releasing the weight of the body. Landing. So many sensations. This body is alive, pulsating, breathing.

Let us invite our attention first to land, to feel our hands. The sensations of the hands, our fingers, thumbs, palm of the hand, the back of the hand. We are able to feel a lot of sensations, so let's start here. As if our mind was in the hands, feeling sensations of coolness, warmth. Maybe the back of your hand is cool, maybe your palm is warm, or not. Contact, pressure, hands touching each other or your lap. Maybe there's tingling, a sense of movement.

Really taking the time to rest and settle with the sensations of the hands. It's one of the most sensitive areas of the body, and the rest will become easier if we take our time here.

Letting the hands be relaxed, giving their weight to the earth. Notice if you really relax the hands, it feels like more sensations are felt. As if releasing allows for more awareness to rush in, to be aware of the sensations. At the end of the out-breath, release some more, and know the sensations.

Letting the wrists relax. The elbows, feeling sensations. The wrists, elbows, lower arms, and upper arms. This amazing body, incredible body, alive. Sensing, knowing, filled with sensations. Contact, pressure, heaviness and lightness. Warmth, coolness. Pulsating.

Let the sensations of the body, the hands, arms—let them have primacy. Not thoughts right now. Fully inhabiting the body and being curious as to what might arise, what might shift in this way of paying attention. Be curious, interested, not the same old same old routine.

Letting the sensations in your face be sensed. The forehead, the eyes resting in their sockets. Your awareness will naturally want to move down to your cheeks. The muscles of the jaw. Sensations of the nose, the upper lip. The lips touching each other. The tongue. Resting, so many sensations. Wow.

The chin. Maybe even the ears, a sense of coolness, warmth. Back of the head, brushing it with awareness. The entire head, face.

If any tension has crept into the eyes, or the forehead, or the jaw, relax, release, and sense some more. Notice that as you release, more sensations become present, available to be known. Or is it that the mind, awareness, becomes more available to know? It doesn't matter right now.

Moving down to the neck and shoulders, simply knowing the sensations. For some, there might be tightness or tension present. Get to know it gently, kindly, without judgment or aversion. It's just a sensation. We slap everything else on top of it, all our reactions, not liking. Just get to know.

Letting awareness feel the sensations in the chest. What is most prominent? The chest, the upper back as the breath moves through. So many sensations.

Moving down to the abdomen. Lower back.

Letting awareness know the sensations in the sit bones on your bottom, contacting the cushion, the chair. Wow, so many sensations.

Notice as you turn your awareness to this part of the body, or any part, this part right now feels like it comes alive with sensations. Wow, so much pulsating. Movement, points of contact, internal heat, external coolness perhaps.

Letting the mind move down to the upper legs. Underneath the legs, over the legs, the top, center. The knees. Let them be relaxed, released, and sensed. Lower legs and feet.

So many sensations known from the inside, not the control tower of the head.

The entire body, all the sensations now. This whole body as the sensations reveal themselves to you. Felt from within, as if the sensation is sensing itself.

That is how you might feel in this moment. The body, the mind, the heart. Appreciating the seeds of stability, of groundedness, peace, that have been planted to nourish wisdom and kindness, because we're more stable, available, here, embodied, spacious.

Let us offer the goodness co-created together, all these goodness seeds planted. Offer them from our heart generously as a gift of our life, our presence, to all beings everywhere, including ourselves.

May all beings everywhere know their own goodness, cultivate their own goodness. May all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be wise, kind, compassionate, and free.

The Mind's Body and Energies Moving

Greetings, friends, and thank you for your practice.

This week we have been exploring the mind's body, or the energy body—some aspects of it. There's so much more to explore; a lifetime's worth of practice is the material to explore. And yet, we've been exploring them this week together, and today I'd like to bring it all together and also share some more teachings.

As we started at the beginning of the week with setting our intention, why are we exploring this? In the Anguttara Nikaya 4.45, the Buddha said: The end of the world can never be reached by walking. However, without having reached the world's end, there is no release from suffering. I declare that it is in this fathom-long body, with its perceptions and thoughts, that there is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world.

So our exploration of the body, the energy body, is for the purpose of awakening, the path leading to awakening. It's not just fun and games, even though at times it might appear so, especially with some of the teachings I share today, which might sound a little more esoteric, but actually, it's what naturally arises.

We explored the different locations of paying attention to the breath. On Tuesday, we did that in the abdomen, chest, and nostrils, and discussed the pros and cons of each of those, especially with relationship to the hindrances^[1]. On Wednesday, we explored a different way of paying attention that can actually lead to insight into not-self (anattā^[2]). We talked about the Bāhiya Sutta: "in the sensed, only the sensed." Being in this sensation, only the sensation being known in and of itself in the body. There's no self needed. Again, there are so many layers to that teaching. If you feel like you've got it, great, and yet know that there are so many more layers to still know and explore.

Yesterday, Thursday, we explored a sense of verticality in the energy body, as well as this billowing orb, and spaciousness—a body without boundaries, completely expanded and spacious, and how that might feel. We also explored how that can be a support for the practice of mettā^[3], for pervading kindness. Physically connecting to the heart can be a lovely practice.

Today in our practice, in the guided meditation, I led us through a body scan. If you noticed, often body scans typically start from the feet or the head—the ends of the body. While that makes sense, hands feel so much more sensation. In our brain, there is a lot more area devoted to sensations of the hands. So it makes more sense actually, with respect to neuroscience and knowing what we know about our bodies, to start with the hands, to really settle the sensations of the hands, and then move to the rest of the body. Just a note there. There are many ways to do a body scan, and many gifts that arise from it.

Something that I was hoping would arise today with sensing these sensations is the groundedness of the mind in the body, a different way of relating to the body, this mind's body, this energy body. I was hoping that you would sense, "Wow, so many sensations here," and a sense of calm, a different shift. It's often hard to put these into words, but I'll just leave that for your own exploration. There's so much to explore here.

Five Types of Rapture

One thing I do want to say in terms of the teaching I want to add today is that with mindfulness of the body, especially in different ways, and also different practices, samādhi^[4] (concentration) can arise—the sense of the mind calming, collecting, becoming stabilized. Also, what are called jhānic^[5] factors can arise. There are five jhānic factors. I think I've talked about them before here when I've subbed for Gil, when I talked about concentration for the whole week. Today, I want to talk specifically about the factor of what's called pīti^[6] or rapture, because that's really one way that the energy body—the shifts and movements in the energy body—really shows up.

Pīti is translated both as rapture and also as joy; there are many different aspects to it. Let me just call it pīti, because there are so many different ways that it can express. Practitioners often get surprised, like, "Whoa, what is that?" That's really the energy body or the mind's body shifting and moving in different ways, as if energy channels are opening.

With very little time left, very briefly, there are five different types of pīti. These are from the Visuddhimagga^[7] (The Path of Purification) teachings. This is a practice manual a thousand pages long and deep.

The first one is minor rapture, which can feel like hair standing on end. You might have had that experience in meditation, or maybe tears flowing. Minor rapture actually occurs for some, not all practitioners. It could happen on rare occasions, some people might experience it regularly, and some not experience it at all.

The second type is called momentary pīti. This can feel like insects crawling on your body. I know that when I was a beginning meditator, I would open my eyes and look, like, "Wait, something's crawling? No, nothing." Over time I realized, "Oh, whenever that happens, it means my mind is getting really, really settled." Then I would never open my eyes. "Yes, that's what that means." So it could feel like that. It can feel like cobwebs brushing your face, or body jerks, jolts, movements of the body that are not intentional, like, "Wow, what is happening?" Sometimes practitioners get spooked out. If this ever happens to you, do not get spooked out. It's just the energy body opening and moving, and it will go through. It will be a phase; the channels will open and then they will settle again. There's so much about this body we don't know.

The third type is called showering or flooding pīti. It can be a stronger shock of electricity. Sometimes it can feel like bright lights bursting in the body, electricity, or waves breaking on the shore. Sometimes it could be a lot of movement, and people feel like they're being rocked back and forth, repeatedly being tossed about. Sometimes people consider this blissful, and sometimes not. Actually not pleasant, like, "Okay, enough already." Again, just letting it pass.

The fourth type is uplifting or transporting pīti, where the body feels fluffy, light, as if you're walking on air. Supposedly, this is how yogis levitate. I haven't experienced or witnessed that, but supposedly this is the energy body that supports that. You can actually experience a lot of lightness, just like walking on clouds. "This body is fluff." So again, different aspects of the energy body.

The last one is all-pervading pīti, which the suttas talk about, especially with respect to the third jhāna. This fifth kind is very blissful. It's joy and bliss radiating all over the body. It's an ecstatic feeling that doesn't leave any cell of your body untouched, completely drenched in this sense of bliss and joy, of this kind of energy body shifting and moving.

I wanted to share these with you just in case they come up, but I also don't want to share these with you to bring any sense of wanting, like, "I want to experience that." If you give your heart to the practice dedicatedly, they will arise if they need to arise. It's not about fun and games; it's about awakening and being kinder, being more generous, being more wise for our own benefit and others'. These are some aspects that can come up in our practice because we all have bodies.

So thank you all for joining this week, for your practice, for your dedication, for your exploration. It's been a delight and joy to support you, to share these teachings that are dear to me, and I hope they've been supportive to you in your practice and your awakening, in your life as a service to yourself and to others, opening your heart and opening your mind to this amazing body of ours. This mind's body, the energy body.

Thank you all, and let us dedicate the benefit and the goodness of our whole week of practice together to all beings everywhere, including ourselves, generously. May all beings, including ourselves, be free, be wise, be compassionate.

Thank you all. Take good care.